Native American issues have gained increasing prominence in Washington and...

Tribal Telecom 2012 Conference in Phoenix. “There is “a new feel for your issues in Washington nowadays,” Copps said. “There is concern from the top down. The FCC is an independent agency, of course, but it can better do what it is capable of doing when other branches of government are of a similar mind. I don’t think I need to assure this crowd that the president is paying attention to you and your issues. Many of you have met with him and know that first-hand.” Copps said he learned early on as a commissioner the importance of tackling the issue of improving communications in Indian country. The National Broadband Plan, changes to the Universal Service Fund, various broadband grants through the Agriculture and Commerce departments, all have helped, but much more needs to happen, Copps said. He noted that a “staggering” 90 to 95 percent of Native American households still don’t have broadband. “How will all this get done?” he asked. “First of all, let me tell you how we will not get it done. We will not get it done if government leaves it to business or business leaves it to government. ‘Going it alone’ is not how we met the infrastructure challenges of the past. That’s not how this country built its bridges and harbors and railroads and interstate highways and rural electricity. We built those things by the public sector and the private sector working together -- the private sector being the locomotive bringing its tools and expertise to the job and the public sector providing a vision for where the country needed to go and real incentives to bring critical infrastructure to places where business alone had neither the means nor the reason to go."